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April 26, 2019 Page 4 securing millions in additional fire pension aids over the past 25 years." You fail, however, to mention the steep decrease in active participation in volunteer pension programs statewide during the same period. (The data presented is accurate but incomplete as it only includes data from plans subject to oversight/regulation by the Office of the State Auditor. As mentioned earlier, and in a data set/documents provided to Chief Scott at the Auditors meeting, the 142 plans [calendar year 2017 plan members versus the 175 current in the plan today] membership number in fact result in a tally closer to 17,718. This "estimate" is validated further by an actual hard count survey done by the State Fire Marshal's Division and Minnesota Board of Training and Education in 2019 which resulted in total count of 20,391 of which 2,384 are career leaving 18,007 as Paid on Call/Volunteer/Part Time. The difference between the 17,718 and 18,007 can be explained by the fact the 17,718 are reported numbers for departments with relief associations/pension plans. Approximately 20 of the states 781 departments have not formed a relief. These are very small departments with 8 to 15 members which when added to the 17,718 approximate and reconcile to the actual count of 18,007.) 17,500 17,000 16.500 16,000 15,500 15,000 14,500 14,000 13,500 13.000 12,500 16,839 16,496 16,490 1996 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 Source: Minnesota Office of the State Auditor, Financial and Investment Reports of Volunteer Fire Relief Associations Figure I Similar trends also exist across the country1. Recent data released by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) estimated that there was a significant drop in volunteer firefighters in recent years. Kevin Quinn, Chair of the National Volunteer Fire Council (NVFC) states, "We know many volunteer fire departments are struggling to maintain adequate staffing. However, the scale of the loss of volunteer firefighters estimated in this report is really disturbing and something that we need to work as a community and a nation to address."